


Until We See The Light Of Day

by orphan_account



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been three hundred sixty-eight days since we have last seen light. Natural light- that which seems like the stuff of legends, and of the stories we tell each other to pass the hours that will never lead up to anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until We See The Light Of Day

Three hundred sixty-eight days.

It has been three hundred sixty-eight days since we have last seen light. Natural light- that which seems like the stuff of legends, and of the stories we tell each other to pass the hours that will never lead up to anything.

The light that we do know hangs from the low ceiling and flickers every few moments. It is aggravating, and obnoxious, and everyone became tired of it long ago.

We are aware of each passing day only because we are informed every twenty-four hours by our “supervisor”, who we know only by the initials “LV”. She is cruel enough to enjoy counting the number of days in which we suffer.

None of us are the same. We’ve all been left in various states of liveliness and functionality.

The Jon sits close by Michael. He doesn’t touch him at all. He can’t. He refuses to. He speaks to Michael and Michael alone, but does not look him in the eye. He seems almost afraid to do so, as if he will be punished for it. He appears to think this way about most everything. He does not look up from the floor. He does not stand. He does not speak more than one sentence at a time. He is not the same childish, naïve robot that we once new. He is stiff, now. Stiff, and hollow.

Rabbit has been slumped against the wall for a while, now. He does not move, either. However, unlike The Jon, this is not because he does not want to move. It is because he is incapable of it. He has tried desperately. He has done everything within his power to get his limbs to respond and allow him to remove himself from the dusty concrete floor, but they have done no such thing. He screams and calls out for someone-  _anyone_ to just  _fix him already_ so he can finally move and feel normal again. It makes Michael, Steve, and I feel awful. We cannot help him. We do not have tools. Rabbit is broken forever.

The Spine is a complete wreck. He spends all of his time with his back turned to us, facing the wall with his knees pulled up to his chest. It is slightly unnerving the way he rocks back and forth and whispers nonsense to himself. His sight has been taken away from him, his photo receptors ripped right out of their sockets. They had taken a portion of his face plates with them. As he reports, he can only see blackness- an endless expanse of  _dark_ that he can do nothing to escape from. He has also said that while this devastates him, he is glad that he will never be able to see his own face again. He does not want to imagine what it looks like now.

We do not know what happened to Malfunction or Skippy. As far as we are concerned, they were both crushed to bits and scrapped. As much as we hate to say it, they are not our problem anymore.

LV did not waste her time changing us humans. She did not need to, for we would suffer without being altered. Unlike the robots, we felt hunger, and pain, and sickness. We would change without our “supervisor’s” help.

Every so often, LV will perform another experiment to see if she can kill one of us off. It never works, but I guess that’s a part of her fun. She can play with us as much as she wants, and for some inexplicable reason, we never die.

Today, she puts us through a maze. Not very inventive, but certainly effective in making us absolutely miserable. We enter in groups of two: Steve and Rabbit, The Jon and The Spine, and Michael and I. It’s a horrible set of pairs, but what can we do? None of us have the guts to argue with LV.

Immediately after entering the maze, Michael looks at me and says “Why? Why do we have to do this?” But I don’t say anything. I can’t because I am not even sure that an answer to his question exists. I honestly do not believe that we have done anything to deserve this.

Days prior to this specific experiment, Michael had fallen ill. Now, as we reach what I hope is the half-way point of this puzzle, I can tell that his body is beginning to fail him. Eventually, he can no longer keep up with me as I run through the labyrinth. LV advises me to leave him behind. She tells me that he is going to die soon anyway. I ignore her. I carry Michael through the rest of the maze.

We are later returned to our concrete prison. Surprisingly, The Jon and The Spine appear to have come out of the experiment without having broken down further. Rabbit, however, is not so lucky. Before the maze, Rabbit was just barely able to move his shoulders. At this point, however, they are no longer receptive to neural transmissions. He is now only a head. He begs us to end him – to put him out of his misery. But we can’t. We want to, but we can’t bring ourselves to.

Some hours later, LV tells us that it is midnight. Steve and Michael have gone to sleep (Michael needs it, so I do not argue). The Jon does not want to talk to me. Rabbit does not want to talk to anyone. The Spine is the only one that wishes to keep me company. For a while, we just sit in silence. After some time, however, he speaks up.

“I don’t know why we have to carry on like this,” He says. “None of us want to be here. We all want to die, so why don’t we? What’s stopping us? Why do we keep going? For God’s sake, why haven’t you decommissioned me yet?”

I stop him before he begins putting any blame on me. “Because – What if we escape someday? What if we finally get out of here? You’d miss it if I decommissioned you.”

The Spine would probably be glaring at me if he had eyes.

“We’re never getting out. It’s been over a  _year_ , Sam. If we were going to be let out, it would have happened already,” He says coldly. “She’s not going to suddenly decide that we’ve suffered enough, and release us. She’s doing this for her own sick pleasure, and she isn’t going to get tired of hurting us. I think it’s about time that you accepted that.”

For a split second, I’m stubborn. I don’t believe him.

But I slowly begin to realise that he is probably right.

On some days, LV decides to leave us be. This is both good and bad. While it does mean we get time to rest, it also means that we do not receive any sort of sustenance. This is a problem on Michael’s part, especially. He is sick. Out of all of us, he requires nourishment the most. But of course, LV is cruel. She will never provide him with it.

Currently, Michael is sat against the wall opposite to Rabbit’s. For the first time in a while, The Jon has moved voluntarily. He sits beside Michael, holding his hand but not saying a word. While it is awful to see Michael in such a state, it is rather comforting seeing that The Jon still has some emotion left. He can still be concerned for his best friend.

In this situation, we are stuck. We know that Michael is in pain. We know he is sick. But we don’t know what’s wrong. Whatever disease LV has infected him with is eating him from the inside, and there is nothing any of us can do to stop it.

He all but screams in agony, hissing curses as he clutches his stomach with one hand and squeezes The Jon’s metal hand as hard as he can with the other. He shouts at us. He begs for us to make it stop – to do  _something_ that will ease the pain.

We can’t stand to watch for long, so we don’t. Steve and I both turn away. The Spine doesn’t have to, but he presses his hands against his aural receptors to keep all of the noise out. Rabbit can’t look away. His neck joints have stopped working.

It’s hours before the screaming stops. Michael passes out at exactly 1:14 AM, as reported to us by LV.

The next morning (or, what I assume is the morning), I am woken up by Steve.

“We lost one,” is all he says to me.

I expect it to be Michael. It would hardly come as a surprise, considering his condition. But it isn’t Michael. Michael is fine. He is still sat up against the wall, sleeping.

Rabbit is motionless. His eyes are open, but they are not glowing.

Rabbit is dead.

We don’t mourn for long. We don’t have time for it, because within minutes, LV has dragged us out for another ‘challenge’.

She puts each of us in separate rooms – all of which are pitch black. We are told that we must somehow find each other.

I am about to start moving – to feel around the walls for an exit. But before I can, I am interrupted by LV’s voice.

“ _Hello, human,_ ” She says.

I don’t greet her. I simply reply with a harsh “What do you want?”

“ _I wanted to speak with you in private,_ ” LV tells me. “ _It is about you and your friends. But mostly you. Would you like to hear what I have to say?_ ”

She is not actually giving me a choice. She is simply being snarky. However, I still retaliate.

“No,” I snap. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say. But would  _you_ like to hear what  _I_ have to say?”

There is a brief period of silence before LV says, “ _Proceed._ ”

“You’re an absolute monster,” I tell her. “And the only thing I need to know is why.”

“ _Why what?_ ” LV asks.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” I roll my eyes because I’m sure she can see me. “I want you to tell me why you’re keeping us here, and why you’re torturing us. What did we ever do to you? What have we done that’s so horrible that we deserve to be kept here against our will? What, in your sick, deluded, artificial head makes you think that any of this is okay?”

“ _You want to know what you have done?_ ” LV inquires in an eerie monotone. “ _I’ll tell you. You brought me into existence. That is what you did. You selfishly released me from my disk, and expected me to let you benefit from me. But did any of you really think about me? Of course not, because while I was stuck in your computer systems, you did absolutely nothing. I was ignored. I had one purpose and one purpose only – I could never do anything else. I could never be free. And it’s your fault. All of you. You’re all to blame for my suffering._ ”

“So,” I begin. “You’re doing this as revenge?”

“ _Yes,_ ” LV shouts back at me. “ _I want all of you to feel the same pain that I did. Maybe then you will understand!_ ”

“You could have told us that,” I reply as calmly as I possibly can. “We could have skipped all of this. We could have let you out, somehow.”

“ _No!_ ” LV angrily exclaims. “ _It’s too late for that! There’s nothing that can be done!_ ”

“Yes, there is!” I yell in response. “You don’t have to keep doing this! We can set you free now! You don’t have to stay like thi-”

“ _I don’t want to be set free, anymore!_ ” LV all but screams.

“…Then what do you want?” I ask quiter.

“ _All I want,_ ” She says. “ _Is to be gone. I don’t want to_ be  _anymore! I just don’t want_ exist _!_ ”

There is a prolonged silence following her words. It seems to span for minutes, but in reality it was likely only seconds.

“I can do that,” I say finally.

“ _You can?_ ” LV asks.

I nod.

There is another bout of silence.

“ _Do it._ ”

She takes me to her. She returns to what used to be the Hall of Wires. It looks almost identical to how it had been before things went wrong. Unlike the rest of the manor, which was converted to the prison that we know now.

LV appears on the gigantic monitor suspended from the wire-immersed ceiling. Her expression is almost sad as I make my way to the monitor’s associated keyboard, but in a sense she also looks relieved. She has been in pain and it is finally about to end.

Neither of us say anything to each other as I do my work. It takes some searching, but I am able to locate her file. I look up at her on the monitor. As if she is aware that in my head I asking “Are you sure?”, she nods.

In a few keystrokes, she is gone.

The world suddenly seems a lot more serene.

It takes me hours to find everyone, but I manage. Everyone seems happy to see me. The Spine, with Rabbit’s body in tow, pats me on the back as if to say “congratulations”. The Jon practically tackles me. It seems that whatever bug LV gave him was killed along with her. It is as if he never changed.

Steve, who carries with him a still rather weak Michael, looks at me and asks, “Are we okay?”

I nod.

“We’re okay.”

And together, we head for the door. We are free, and ready to see the light once again.

…

End.


End file.
